Infrastructural Vanguards and the Problem of Connectivity Under Anarchy
Historically deepening ‘interaction capacity’ – or inter-polity connectivity – has formed a crucial pre-condition for the emergence of a truly global politics. Who drove increases in interaction capacity, how did they do so, and for what purposes? This paper contends that IR lacks a convincing answer to these questions and responds by theorising the role of private infrastructure builders in the making of a global international system. Focusing on three examples of ‘infrastructural vanguards’ – 17th-century company-states, 19th-century submarine cable companies, and 21st-century platform companies – we trace the globalisation of world politics through these actors’ creative responses to what we term the problem of connectivity under anarchy. By overcoming technical-administrative, commercial, and political barriers associated with intermediation at a distance, we show that infrastructural vanguards were key drivers of what made today’s international system hang together. Our argument thereby furnishes a novel historical-sociological account of technologists as worldmakers, while contributing to IR’s burgeoning interest in infrastructural politics.
Date: 7 November 2024, 12:30
Venue: Manor Road Building, Manor Road OX1 3UQ
Venue Details: Seminar Room A
Speaker: Andrew Dougall (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR)
Organiser: Rachel Roberts (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: rachel.roberts@politics.ox.ac.uk
Part of: IR Research Colloquium
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Holly Omand, Daniel Burton, Rachel Roberts